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The season of fear, in more ways than one© St. Petersburg Times, published October 28, 2000 It is hauntingly appropriate that Election Day comes shortly after Halloween. Amid the pumpkins, ghosts and scary black cats that decorate our yards and houses, we have politicians trying once again to scare everyone to death. All trick and no treat. It is disgusting that so many campaigns this year are attempting once again to scare senior citizens into voting one way or another. This pattern was laid in 1994 when Gov. Lawton Chiles used deceptive telephone calls to suggest that Jeb Bush would do something to take away Social Security and Medicare protections. A year later, after he won re-election by the narrowest of margins, Chiles confessed that his campaign created the phony groups and made the last-minute calls. Unfortunately, the calls remain one of the best remembered legacies of the late governor. This year we have both Republicans and Democrats relying on similar calls and a blizzard of television and direct mail advertising campaigns that have the same aim. The voices on our home telephone this year are familiar. First there was Barbara Bush calling to reassure us that her son, George W., would never do anything to take away Medicare and Social Security. Next there was Ed Asner calling to say that Bush is threatening to take it all away. I am 60 years old, a few years away from getting any of these benefits, and my husband is almost 70, already into the Medicare and Social Security largess. My guess is we're being targeted for these calls and some equally scary mail because we are regular voters of a certain age. I seriously doubt that any candidate -- for president or Congress -- is going to do anything to take away Social Security and Medicare, but they can certainly spread unease among those who depend on them. I can imagine how our mothers might have reacted to this situation. Both of them spent their later days worrying about the high cost of medical care and wondering whether Medicare would be there when they needed it most. They did without things that would have made their lives a lot more fun so they would have enough money to cover any final illness without burdening anyone else. I'm glad they didn't live long enough to see politicians use them as a political football. This is a mean season, too mean for words in some instances. Some of the news tips and story suggestions that have been called in to us are obscenely indecent. It never ceases to amaze me what some people will do to win an election. We've been asked to expose young children to ridicule and negative publicity to make a political point for some. We've been repeatedly lied to by the very people who will be asking us to trust them when they get elected. We feel like we're running a kindergarten -- it's so much a bunch of squabbling children who complain that someone is pulling their hair. It would seem to me that a candidate who has to stoop obscenely low to get elected doesn't deserve to be there. You might simply want to turn a deaf ear to anything said or done in the next 10 days. You'll be a lot happier.
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From the Times state desk
From the state wire
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